National Institute of Standards and Technology – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites organizations to provide products and technical expertise to support and demonstrate security platforms for the Trusted Geolocation in the Cloud Building Block. This notice is the initial step for the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) in collaborating with technology companies to address cybersecurity challenges identified under the Trusted Geolocation in the Cloud Building Block. Participation in the building block is open to all interested organizations.

The National Advisory Committee on Windstorm Impact Reduction (NACWIR or Committee), will hold a webinar initiating the work of the Committee via video conference on Wednesday, May 17, 2017, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. This will be the first meeting of the Committee and is intended to provide Committee members and the public with a description of the statutory requirements and scope of work of the Committee, an overview of the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP) and the draft NWIRP Strategic Plan, and to propose timeframes and milestones for the work of the Committee. Interested members of the public will be able to view the webinar and participate from remote locations by calling in to a central phone number.

The Department of Commerce, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on proposed and/or continuing information collections, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.

The Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazards Reduction (ACEHR or Committee), will hold an open meeting via a cloud-based video conference on Wednesday, May 3, 2017, from 3:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. Eastern Time. The primary purpose of this meeting is to discuss an outline for the Committee's 2017 Report on the Effectiveness of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP). The agenda may change to accommodate Committee business. The final agenda and any meeting materials will be posted on the NEHRP Web site at https:// nehrp.gov/. Interested members of the public will be able to participate in the meeting from remote locations by calling in to a central phone number.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announces that the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Advisory Board will hold an open meeting on April 30, 2017.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (``NIST''), U.S. Department of Commerce, is contemplating the grant of an exclusive license in the United States of America, its territories, possessions and commonwealths, to NIST's interest in the invention embodied in U.S. Patent Application No. 62/302,855, titled ``Prostate Cancer Detection Using Western Blot Analysis,'' (NIST Docket No. 16-007) to McJimpsey Biotechnologies, Inc. The grant of the license would be for prostate cancer detection.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) requests comments on the Draft Strategic Plan for the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP or Program). The Draft NWIRP Strategic Plan is posted on the NIST Web site at: https://www.nist.gov/ el/mssd/nwirp.

The Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT or Committee), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will meet by webinar in an open session on Thursday, March 16, 2017 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The VCAT is composed of not fewer than 9 members appointed by the NIST Director, a majority of whom are eminent in such fields as business, research, new product development, engineering, labor, education, management consulting, environment, and international relations.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) requests comments on a proposed update to the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (the ``Framework''). The voluntary Framework consists of standards, methodologies, procedures, and processes that align policy, business, and technological approaches to address cyber risks. The Framework was published on February 12, 2014, after a year-long, open process involving private and public sector organizations, including extensive input and public comments. It has been used with increasing frequency and in a variety of ways by organizations of all sizes, areas of interest, and based inside and outside the United States. This Request for Comments (RFC) is meant to facilitate coordination with, ``private sector personnel and entities, critical infrastructure owners and operators, and other relevant industry organizations'' as directed by the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014.\1\ The proposed update to the Framework is available for review at https://www.nist.gov/ cyberframework. Responses to this RFC will be posted at https:// www.nist.gov/cyberframework and will inform NIST's planned update to the Framework.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) originally published a document announcing an upcoming meeting of the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT or Committee) on January 3, 2017 (82 FR 92). The meeting time, dates, and details have been updated. The VCAT will now meet by webinar in an open session on Wednesday, February 8, 2017 from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The VCAT is composed of fifteen members appointed by the NIST Director who are eminent in such fields as business, research, new product development, engineering, labor, education, management consulting, environment, and international relations.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites and requests nomination of individuals for appointment to nine existing Federal Advisory Committees: Board of Overseers of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Judges Panel of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, Manufacturing Extension Partnership Advisory Board, National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee, Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazards Reduction, National Advisory Committee on Windstorm Impact Reduction, NIST Smart Grid Advisory Committee, and Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology. NIST will consider nominations received in response to this notice for appointment to the Committees, in addition to nominations already received. Registered Federal lobbyists may not serve on NIST Federal Advisory Committees.

In March 2016, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and ASTM International announced a new international standard that can ``map'' the critically important environmental aspects of manufacturing processes, leading to significant improvements in sustainability while keeping a product's life cycle low cost and efficient. Sustainability for manufacturing is beginning to be addressed through the recently approved ASTM Standard Guide for Characterizing Environmental Aspects of Manufacturing Processes (ASTM E60.13 E3012-16). The standard provides a science-based, systematic approach to capture and describe information about the environmental aspects for any manufacturing production process or group of processes, and then use that data to make informed decisions on improvements. NIST is announcing the Reusable Abstractions of Manufacturing Processes (RAMP) Challenge, with support from ASTM International, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC) Organizing Committee, to familiarize the community with a recent standard for modeling manufacturing processes that was developed under the ASTM's E60.13 Subcommittee on Sustainable Manufacturing. The RAMP Challenge calls on participants (either as an individual or as a team) to model any manufacturing process and demonstrate application of the ASTM E3012-16 Unit Manufacturing Process (UMP) representation for purposes of information sharing and sustainability assessment. The RAMP Challenge will provide an opportunity for participants to put this standard into practice in modeling a process of their own interest, and to share experiences in applying the standard across a variety of processes. Formal methods for acquiring and exchanging information about manufacturing processes will lead to consistent characterizations and help establish a collection for reuse of these models. Standard methods will ensure effective communication of computational analytics and sharing of sustainability performance data. Results of the competition will assist in demonstrating the use of a reusable standard format leading to models suitable for automated inclusion in a system analysis, such as a system simulation model or an optimization program.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites organizations to provide products and technical expertise to support and demonstrate security platforms for the Multifactor Authentication for e-Commerce Project for the retail sector. This notice is the initial step for the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) in collaborating with technology companies to address cybersecurity challenges identified under the retail sector program. Participation in the Multifactor Authentication for e-Commerce Project is open to all interested organizations.

The Department of Commerce, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on proposed and/or continuing information collections, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites organizations to provide products and technical expertise to support and demonstrate security platforms for Mobile Application Single Sign On (SSO) for the Public Safety & First Responder sector. This notice is the initial step for the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) in collaborating with technology companies to address cybersecurity challenges identified under the Public Safety & First Responder sector program. Participation in the use case is open to all interested organizations.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce, owns two patents related to controlled liposome formation using microfluidic channels: U.S. Patent 9,198,645, titled ``Controlled Vesicle Self-Assembly in Continuous Two Phase Flow Microfluidic Channels'' (NIST Docket 04-003); and U.S. Patent 8,715,591, title ``Microfluidic Apparatus to Control Liposome Formation'' (NIST Docket 09-017). Further details about these patents are provided in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section, below.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce, is establishing the Mouse Cell Line Authentication Consortium and invites organizations to participate in this Consortium. The Consortium will collaborate to obtain concordant short tandem repeat (STR) profiles for mouse cell lines, draft consensus standards for mouse cell line authentication, and create a public database of STR profiles for mouse cell lines. The Consortium has been developed in collaboration with American Type Culture Collection (ATCC). Participation in this Consortium is open to all eligible organizations, as described below.

The Judges Panel of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (Judges Panel) will meet in closed session Sunday, October 30, 2016 through Friday, November 4, 2016, from 8:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. Eastern time each day. The purpose of this meeting is to review recommendations from site visits, and recommend 2016 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipients. The meeting is closed to the public in order to protect the proprietary data to be examined and discussed at the meeting.

The Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board (ISPAB) will meet Wednesday, October 26, 2016, from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., Eastern Time, Thursday, October 27, 2016, from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., Eastern Time, and Friday, October 28, 2016 from 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. All sessions will be open to the public.

In 2011, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum Accelerating Technology Transfer and Commercialization of Federal Research in Support of High-Growth Businesseswhich called on Federal agencies to establish performance goals, metrics, evaluation methods, and implementation plans to improve the effectiveness of Federal technology transfer activities. The President's charge has stimulated agency interest in studies that assess the impact of technologies transferred from Federal laboratories. In an effort to encourage research in this area, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Journal of Technology Transfer present a Federal Impact Assessment (FIA) Challenge for researchers to develop impact studies of Federal technology transfer activities. The FIA Challenge calls on researchers to perform original retrospective studies that assess the impact of federally developed technologies that (1) have been developed completely or in part by Federal researchers working at any Federal agency at any time over the past 30 years, and (2) have been transferred to an entity other than the agency which developed the technology.

This notice lists the membership of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Performance Review Board (NIST PRB) and supersedes the list published on September 3, 2014.

The Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT or Committee), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will meet in an open session on Tuesday, October 18, 2016 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Mountain Time and Wednesday, October 19, 2016 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Mountain Time. The VCAT is composed of fifteen members appointed by the NIST Director who are eminent in such fields as business, research, new product development, engineering, labor, education, management consulting, environment, and international relations.

The Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity requests information about current and future states of cybersecurity in the digital economy. As directed by Executive Order 13718, ``Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity'' (the ``Executive Order''), the Commission will make detailed recommendations to strengthen cybersecurity in both the public and private sectors while protecting privacy, ensuring public safety and economic and national security, fostering discovery and development of new technical solutions, and bolstering partnerships between Federal, State and local government and the private sector in the development, promotion, and use of cybersecurity technologies, policies, and best practices. The Secretary of Commerce was tasked by the Exective Order to direct the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to provide the Commission with such expertise, services, funds, facilities, staff, equipment, and other support services as may be necessary to carry out its mission. Responses to this RFIwhich will be posted at https://www.nist.gov/ cybercommissionwill inform the Commission as it develops its detailed recommendations.

This is a notice in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 209(e) and 37 CFR 404.7(a)(1)(i) that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (``NIST''), U.S. Department of Commerce, is contemplating the grant of an exclusive license in the United States of America, its territories, possessions and commonwealths, to NIST's interest in the invention embodied in U.S. Patent Application No. 15/188,211, titled ``Acousto-Microwave System for Determining Mass or Leak of Gas in a Vessel and Process for Same,'' (NIST Docket No. 15-010US1) to Western Energy Support & Technology, Inc. The grant of the license would be for leak rate testing and gas flow standards fields of uses.

The Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity will meet Tuesday, August 23, 2016, from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Central Time at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium-DQ Club Room. The primary purpose of the meeting is to discuss the challenges and opportunities for organizations and consumers in securing the digital economy. In particular, the meeting will address: (1) Challenges confronting consumers in the digital economy; (2) innovation (Internet of Things, healthcare, and other areas); and (3) assured products and services. The meeting will support detailed recommendations to strengthen cybersecurity in both the public and private sectors while protecting privacy, ensuring public safety and economic and national security, fostering discovery and development of new technical solutions, and bolstering partnerships between Federal, State, local, tribal and territorial governments and the private sector in the development, promotion, and use of cybersecurity technologies, policies, and best practices. All sessions will be open to the public.